Labour and Hegemony in South Africa’s First Decade of Majority Rule

Abstract

Carolyn Bassett’s article “Labour and Hegemony in South Africa’s First Decade of Majority Rule” explores some of the general dilemmas faced by progressive activists; in particular, problems faced by democratic trade unionists in the context of the post-apartheid government in South Africa. The article seeks to explain why a powerful and ostensibly socialist trade union, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), adopted a strategy to co-manage capitalist economic restructuring in partnership with the African National Congress (ANC) government during the 1990s. She examines whether COSATU’s participation in the National Economic Development and Labour Council (NEDLAC) represented a real power-sharing arrangement in which Labour’s interests would be truly represented in a transition to socialism or an incorporation of Labour into an ANC strategy to consolidate bourgeois hegemony. Drawing on Antonio Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, Bassett argues that in fact, COSATU paved the way to its own marginalization within the country’s political and economic system, thus enabling corporate leaders to take a leading role in the economic restructuring that followed the downfall of apartheid. While her conclusions are pessimistic, this article serves as a useful reminder of the constraints that exist on trade union actors even within the context of apparently progressive regimes.